Cobra in the Bath

by Miles Morland

  ‘Lincoln, on the other hand, is an excellent place. One of the best of the smaller colleges. We have sent some of our best boys there, some fine cwicketers and even,’ Cecil leaned forward and squeezed my knee, ‘some oarsmen. Yes, I think you’d be vewy much at home there.’

  Academic matters were of no interest to Cecil.

  So I took my Balliol papers across the Broad and down the Turl to Lincoln, 200 yards away. Lincoln did not seem upset at playing second fiddle to Balliol and said they would be happy to offer me a place in the coming year and that they looked forward to seeing me in September. I accepted.

  I had hated my ten years of boarding school not because of the bullying and the beatings but because of the loss of freedom and the way the teaching had squelched my love of learning. After school Oxford was literally unbelievable. People doing science or medicine or mathematics had busy week-long schedules which kept them bent over desks in classrooms and labs; people doing arts subjects, in my case law, had untrammelled freedom. Once a week you trotted off to see your tutor; he would suggest a subject to look at about which you might like to write an essay and hint at books you might consult in the course of doing research for the essay. A week later you returned and read out the essay. My tutor, Brian Simpson, was a remarkable man. He died in 2011; I cut his obituary out of the Guardian. It started: ‘Brian Simpson, who has died aged 79, was one of the greatest academic lawyers of his generation in the fields of legal history, legal philosophy and – more recently – human rights. His commitment to excellence in scholarship combined with his gift for a good story to make him a superb teacher and raconteur.’

  Intoxicated with the unaccustomed freedom of Oxford, I did not take work very seriously. I went to a few lectures but that soon petered out. The last lecture I attended was halfway through my first term. Ironically it was being given by the law tutor at Balliol in a hall which could have held 400 people. The subject was Roman law, which had attracted an audience of about thirty. The lecturer was bent with age and had long flowing white hair. He was also blind. He stood at the lectern reading out his lecture in a frail monotone voice as his hand travelled across his Braille notes. Outside it was a beautiful day and the pubs were open.

  After ten minutes one of the audience quietly folded his notebook, rose to his feet and tiptoed out of the room. Then another. The boredom was absolute. I continued to take notes but a few minutes later I too got silently to my feet and crept out leaving the blind lecturer chanting away to an increasingly empty room like an Old Testament prophet.

  I am not a regretter but I am sorry about the opportunities I missed at Oxford. If you were in residence at the university you were free to go to lectures given by anyone in any subject. While I was an undergraduate some of the great figures of the literary and historical world were teaching at Oxford and lecturing regularly. I could have listened to A. J. P. Taylor or his arch-enemy Hugh Trevor-Roper lecturing about history. Robert Graves had succeeded W. H. Auden as Professor of Poetry and gave regular talks to anyone who cared to come and listen. From the older generation A. L. Rowse spoke on history and Lord David Cecil on English. Even the great polymath Isaiah Berlin gave lectures. These were scholars respected across the world who had the ability to hold and entertain an audience not just instruct them. Fascinating and learned people lectured on politics and architecture. What an opportunity. And one I chose utterly to ignore. Unlike Steve Jobs, who said in his famous Stanford commencement speech how fortunate he was to have dropped out of college but to have stuck around on campus. That meant that instead of going to classes that bored him in his required subjects he could drop into classes on any subject that fired his imagination.*

  It was necessary to do some work in your first two terms as you had an exam at the end of your second term called Moderations. In law and most other arts subjects, if you failed your Mods, that was it. You were kicked out and not invited back. As far as I could see the law syllabus at Oxford was designed to be of no practical use at all. God forbid that you should want to use it for anything so mundane as to practise law. Oxford saw itself as an academic institution, not a vocational school. Somehow I passed my Law Mods, and after that I and every other first-year arts student was faced with no further exam until finals at the end of their university career.

  Oxford was an easy place to make friends and an easy place to have a good time; your second, exam-free, year was a time for doing both. Mine passed in a blur of late nights, 11 a.m. breakfasts in the Covered Market, girlfriends who never seemed to last very long, twenty-four-hour poker sessions, pubs, sitting around in the Junior Common Room arguing for the sake of arguing, afternoons in punts, more pubs, and sessions of beer and shove-halfpenny in Deepers, or Deep Hall, the college bar situated in a cellar under the main dining hall.

  Having spent so much time rowing at school and knowing what a time-hungry sport it was – you needed to spend several hours a day six days a week training if you wanted to be in a competitive crew – I was not sure how much I wanted to get involved in rowing at Oxford. But without thinking too hard about it, in my first term I found myself rowing in the University Pairs competition and then I put myself forward for Trial VIIIs. In the winter term trials were held to select the squad of sixteen oarsmen who would make up the Blue Boat, as the Oxford crew is called, and Isis, the reserve crew.

  I was selected for the squad, and in January, after Christmas at home, I presented myself along with fifteen other oarsmen and two coxes for training. The Oxford crew never trains on the Isis, as the Thames is called where it flows through the city, as it is too crooked and too crowded. Instead the squad got in a bus and went to Wallingford or Radley to train. The only problem when we turned up in early January 1963 was that the river had frozen over. Two weeks later people were driving cars on it. There were snowdrifts ten feet high. The winter of 1962/3 was the coldest winter since the Little Ice Age ended in 1740. For six weeks the temperature in Oxford did not go above freezing.

  But rowing at Oxford and Cambridge is a serious matter. Ten feet of snow and a frozen river were not going to be allowed to interrupt Boat Race training. We climbed aboard the crew bus in the Broad and set off past mountainous snowdrifts for Henley, an hour’s drive away. The river at Henley is wide and straight. It had not frozen over but it did have ice floes the size of ping-pong tables rocketing down on the current. Racing shells in 1963 were made from the thinnest of plywoods, not fibreglass or carbon fibre as they are today. A collision between a racing shell at full stretch and an ice floe would shatter the boat, thereby plunging eight oarsmen and a cox into the arctic water. But that was not going to stop us either. Copper sheaths were made for the bows of the two boats, and we took to the water bow-heavy but safe from being sliced to shreds by the ice. In 1963 health and safety were not a concern.

  The cold was so severe that the spray kicked up by the oars froze as soon as it hit your hair. Likewise the oars themselves were soon coated in gleaming tubes of ice. Despite the cold we did not put on extra clothing; in those days rowing in track suit bottoms was considered effeminate. We rowed in shorts, a T-shirt and a dark blue cotton sweater. Gloves were thought a bit girlie. Fortunately rowing is a high-energy sport and our bodies, if not our extremities, warmed up quickly. After ten minutes a watcher from the bank through the blizzard would have seen the shimmering apparition of two copper-sheathed racing shells and sixteen oarsmen with glinting helmets of ice with bodies steaming like racehorses on the December gallops.

  Six days a week we made the journey to Henley, and gradually the squad divided into the prospective Blue Boat to row against Cambridge, and Isis, the reserve. It was proving difficult to find the right combination for the Blue Boat. Everyone from Isis was tried at one time or another with the exception of me. Finally the crew was announced, and two weeks before the Boat Race the Blue Boat departed for Putney, where they would spend their time getting used to the Tideway and rowing the Boat Race course to Mortlake. I was disappointed that after ten weeks of train
ing in arctic conditions I had not been selected or even tried in the Blue Boat.

  Ten days before the Boat Race I was walking into Lincoln one afternoon when the hall porter stopped me. ‘There’s a Mr Graham Cooper looking for you, sir. I just sent him along to your room.’ Graham had rowed for Oxford in 1960, when the Oxford crew had been selected to represent Britain at the Olympics, and again in 1961. While not one of the coaches in 1963, Graham did a number of things to support the crew. I met him on the way to my room and we went inside.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some news for you. Do you know what this is?’ He rummaged around in a grip he had brought with him and took out a dark blue flannel blazer with blue silk trimming.

  ‘Yes, of course. That’s a Blue Boat blazer.’

  Graham got other things out of the bag: a blue-trimmed T-shirt, a dark blue sweater with crossed oars and OUBC in gothic script above them.

  ‘They’re yours.’

  Graham rocked back in his chair, hooted with laughter then handed the kit to me. I was utterly bemused, wondering if this was a complicated practical joke.

  ‘Here’s what’s happened,’ he said. ‘Toby hasn’t been rowing well, and that’s been slowing the boat down.’

  Toby was Toby Tennant, an amiable and easy-going Scottish aristocrat who was president of the OUBC – the captain of the crew.

  ‘He’s spoken with the coaches, and they’ve agreed that he’s going to stand down from the crew. You’re going to replace him. I’ve got your kit here. I’ve squared it with your tutor so you can leave Oxford before the end of term. Pack whatever you need and let’s go. I’ll drive you up to Putney.’

  We drove up to London with me in a daze. How strange that the only person who had not been tried in the Blue Boat should be parachuted in at the last moment. At that time there was a team of amateur coaches, all old Oxford blues. Most of the coaches in 1963 came from Eton, the most powerful rowing school, but Ronnie Howard, my old Radley coach, was also a member of the team. I knew that Ronnie had a good opinion of me as an oarsman following our win the previous summer at Henley and I could only think that he had vouched for me. Sean Morris, one of the linchpins of the 1962 Radley crew and the most determined man I have ever met, was already in the Blue Boat.

  At 9 a.m. the next morning the Oxford crew took to the river at Putney with me replacing Toby in the number-four position. The boat was rowed in a more old-fashioned style compared to the one I had learned under Ronnie at Radley. In the modern way, as practised by the German crews and adopted by Ronnie, the body hardly moved, remaining upright throughout the stroke with all the work being done by the drive with the legs. The Eton style involved a long lie-back at the finish of the stroke. It took me a little time to get used to the old-fashioned way, but after half an hour or so the boat seemed to be moving well, and everyone else seemed to think the rhythm was better than it had been in recent days.

  In the 1960s the Boat Race got far more publicity than it does today. The next morning the change in the Oxford crew was featured in all the major newspapers, and I found a large picture of me in Blue Boat kit staring out of the first sports page of the Daily Telegraph with the heading FRESHMAN TAKES OVER.

  Ten days later we were up against Cambridge. They were heavy favourites to win, with Oxford’s last-minute crew change seen as a sign of desperation. I was expecting to be very nervous on the day of the race and I was certainly nervous enough the night before, trying to sleep while knowing that in a few hours’ time I would be on television in front of a giant audience.* Everyone expected us to lose, and I hoped that we would not disgrace ourselves.

  But once you get into the crew bus to go down to the boathouse, nerves evaporate and routine takes over. You change, carry the boat out, put it in the water, fetch your oars, and then one by one climb on to a little wooden platform to step into the boat, slip your oar into the rigger and wait for the command from the cox to start the easy paddle out to the start. All this is done on autopilot. You have done it many times before.

  Toby, now our non-rowing captain, had won the toss and chosen the Surrey station. This gave Cambridge the advantage of the bend for the first four minutes of the race, and then, a minute after that, we would have the Hammersmith bend in our favour. Cambridge were known to be lightning-fast off the start. Their strategy would be to use the advantage of the first bend to get far enough ahead of us to move over and take our water. This would nullify our advantage around the long Hammersmith bend as they would then have us line astern of them. As the umpire raised his flag to signal he was about to start us, I glanced across at the Cambridge crew. They looked enormous and very confident. And there, looking particularly confident in the number-seven seat was Donald Legget, the man who had had me beaten at Radley.

  The script unfolded along the expected lines. Cambridge shot off the start and soon I could see their rudder moving out of my sight line as they accelerated away from us. But we had one advantage: our stroke, Duncan Spencer, an iron-willed American who had broken a long string of Harvard victories when he had stroked the Yale crew. We knew how tough Duncan was and trusted him absolutely. He would not be panicked as Cambridge disappeared out of the sight of everyone but our cox. When I watched the race years later on a television replay I realised how far ahead Cambridge had got. They had clear water between us and them. Another six feet and they would have been able to move over safely into our water and leave us bucketing around in their wash.

  We never gave them that six feet. As the river first straightened and then the Hammersmith bend began, Duncan shouted, ‘C’mon, guys, let’s go,’ and wound the rating up. Everything came together and the boat began to sing. The rhythm was perfect. When a boat is singing you feel as if you have handed over control of your body to some outside power. You do not feel tired, you do not think about what you are doing; instinct and rhythm drive everything. As Duncan took the rating up we felt unstoppable. And then out of the corner of my left eye the Cambridge rudder came back into sight, and then their stroke man, followed quickly by Legget.

  Chris Strong, our cox, was yelling, ‘I’ve got stroke, give me seven. They’re cracking. We’ve got them. I’ve got seven, give me six,’ as he moved past each member of the Cambridge crew. Chris’s yells encouraged us, but more importantly we knew they could also be heard by the Cambridge crew and how demoralising they would be.

  A minute after Duncan had started our spurt, the Cambridge boat had gone from being a length and a bit ahead to being alongside us. Half a minute later we shot Hammersmith Bridge with Cambridge a third of a length behind. We had rowed right through them and they had no answer. Twelve minutes later we crossed the finishing line five lengths ahead.

  In retrospect I should have got out of the boat after what seemed to me the miraculous victory of 1963 and spent the rest of my time at Oxford doing non-sporting things. I might even have gone to listen to Robert Graves giving a lecture. But spending five hours a day rowing or in a bus going to rowing for another year when I had already, six months into my Oxford career, been lucky enough to have been parachuted into a decisively victorious crew at the last moment, seemed like returning to a well which could offer me no sweeter water. And, as Ma would frequently tell me, ‘Mileso, you never know when to stop.’

  So, six months later, there I was in September 1963 presenting myself once more for Trial VIIIs. As a returning blue I now had an almost guaranteed place in the boat, and we were hot favourites to beat Cambridge. I was so confident I was thinking of rowing with a bottle of champagne under my seat, which I would pop open as we passed the finishing line victorious.

  I do not need to tell you the result of the 1964 Boat Race. Cambridge shot away from us at the start, and this time there was no question of rowing them down. They continued to shoot away. At the finishing line they were six lengths ahead of us. Thank God I had not taken the champagne.

  I cannot describe the awfulness of losing the Boat Race. If you were to ask Matthew Pinsent, who won four g
old medals at consecutive Olympics, his most powerful rowing memory it would probably be the day his strongly favoured 1993 Oxford boat lost to a weaker Cambridge crew. In our case we did not just lose; we were humiliated. Cambridge were out of sight after two minutes, and we knew that we were not going to see them again, but we still had another fifteen minutes of heart-bursting rowing ahead of us. To say that losing the 1964 Boat Race left a sour taste would be an understatement. I could not walk away from rowing with that as my last experience.

  Duncan Spencer and I were the only members of the 1963 and 1964 crews who returned for 1965. Sean Morris, my Radley companion who had been in the winning 1963 crew, had chosen not to row in the 1964 boat because he did not like the coaching methods. For 1965 I was elected president of the OUBC, with Sean as my deputy and co-conspirator.

  Sean and I decided we would do away with many of the revered traditions that had served us badly in 1964 and take Oxford rowing into the modern world. We asked Ronnie Howard to be the chief coach; he would be using the methods that had been working so well in Germany for Karl Adam. Ronnie was going to do half of the twelve-week final training period, and for the second half we enraged the Oxford rowing establishment by not asking an Oxford blue but inviting Sam Mackenzie to coach.

  Sam Mackenzie was a giant Australian who had won the Diamond Challenge Sculls at Henley six times. Sam did his best to annoy the Henley old guard. He would stop in the middle of a race, adjust his clothing, wave at the crowd in the Henley Stewards’ Enclosure, the holy of holies of British rowing, wait till his competitor had caught up and overtaken him and then set off again and demolish him; sometimes he swept past the enclosures wearing a bowler hat. We liked Sam’s aggressive nature.

  We had good material to pick from. Some of Duncan’s Harvard-beating Yale friends had got places at Oxford and would be available for selection, and there was a promising pool of home-grown talent. British rowing was doing well in the early 1960s. A crew from Tideway Scullers had won silver at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and London University was producing a succession of championship-winning crews which, they liked to say, would crush either Oxford or Cambridge if they ever got the chance to row against us, although it was an unshakable tradition that neither Oxford nor Cambridge ever rowed against another crew over the Boat Race course. My first act after we had settled on the coaching team was to announce that we would accept a challenge from any of the top crews in the country over the full course in the weeks of training leading up to the Boat Race.